The full game can be seen at N5 but here I want to concentrate on the opening, which was a Berlin Defence to the Spanish.
After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.d3 Bc5 5.0-0 Nd4 6.Nxd4 Bxd4 7.c3 Bb6 the game reached a position occurring 526 times in ChessBase's 2022 Mega database.
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| How should White proceed? |
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No fewer than 14 moves have been tried, with most popular being 8.Nd2 and 8.Bg5, but the game saw White expand on the queenside with 8.a4!?, when there came 8...c6 9.Bc4 0-0.
Here Aleksandra Maltsevskaya (2382) - Jung Min Seo (2453), Chess.com Blitz 2021, continued 10.Bg5 h6 11.Bh4 g5!? 12.Bg3 d5 13.exd5 cxd5 14.Bb3 with approximate equality, according to Stockfish15 and Komodo13.02 (but 1-0, 31 moves).
The engines agree with 10.Bg5, but their second choice is my opponent's 10.h3!?, which seems to be a novelty and may be a little slow.
The point is Black is ready to play 10...d5 with tempo. The reply 11.exd5 is more or less forced, and I continued with 11...Nxd5, leaving White with a semi-backward d pawn on a half-open file.
White played 12.Kh2?, which is asking for trouble. The engines prefer 12.Nd2 but reckon Black has a slight edge (Stockfish15) or the better part of equality (Komodo13.02) after 12...Bf5 or 12...Bc7!?
The lesson here is that even in a closed system of the Berlin, which White chose with 4.d3, piece-play can be sharp, and a wasted tempo is likely to prove troublesome.
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